On April 1, 1964, Brazil suffered a civil-military coup that stifled freedom in the country for 21 years. After 59 years, today Brazilian democracy still shows signs of fragility – on January 8 of this year, Bolsonaro protesters invaded the headquarters of the Three Powers in an attempt to carry out a new coup.
Like the 2023 episode, the 1964 movement championed the discourse of ‘riding the country of corruption and communism’. An agenda that dialogues, in many aspects, with the current extreme right.
The coup attacks of 1964 began at dawn on April 1, with tanks heading towards Rio de Janeiro, in an attempt to intimidate the then President of the Republic, João Goulart (Brazilian Labor Party), who was in the capital. of the state.
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Days before, Jango, as he was known, had given a speech in the city in defense of the grassroots reforms, a set of measures to reduce social inequalities. The Brazilian president’s speech was the trigger for the coup, being perceived as “very passionate.” However, the military refuses to assume the date, which is also April Fool’s Day or Joke Day.
On April 2, 1964, the president of the Federal Senate, Auro de Moura, declared the presidency of the Republic vacant. Thus, the Military Junta took power in Brazil and began to govern through Institutional Acts (AI), decrees with supposed constitutional power to try to legitimize the dictatorship and expand the powers of the military.
According to a report by the National Truth Commission, the military regime was directly responsible for 434 deaths and enforced disappearances and turned the country’s institutions into the hands of commanders of the Armed Forces.
external interference
The civic-military coup of 1964 had external support. Operation Brother Sam was deployed in Washington to provide military and logistic support to the Brazilian Army.
João Goulart’s Independent Foreign Policy was also responsible for the Brazilian position on US sanctions on Cuba, especially after the nationalizations of oil refineries carried out by the Cuban Revolution.
Has Brazil overcome the blow?
Recent events in Brazilian politics show that coup aspirations are still seen as a political tactic by the extreme right.
In 2016, a new coup, this time media-parliamentary, removed then-president Dilma Rousseff (Workers Party) from power.
On January 8 of this year, once again, coup leaders invaded the headquarters of the Three Powers in Brasilia in opposition to the recently sworn in government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party).
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According to an AtlasIntel survey published on February 1 of this year, 39% of the population does not trust the Armed Forces. In the same survey, distrust in the National Congress and in the Superior Federal Court was 57% and 47%, respectively.
For the researcher Piero Leirner, qualitative research and analysis are necessary to associate the fall in popularity of the Armed Forces with Bolsonaro. He also points out that such surveys are not applied in territories where the Armed Forces have operated, such as in the peripheries or indigenous communities.
Support for the coup does not seem to be, therefore, only a question of institutional politics, but of politics in its broadest aspect, such as the guarantee of rights expressly guaranteed since the 1988 Constitution.
Edition: Patricia de Matos
